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Ohio’s recovery could be sluggish, report states

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Staff Report 11:06 AM Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Ohio may be in for a sluggish recovery if the economy’s performance following recessions in the past two decades are any indication, according to a new report from the Ohio State University’s Swank Program in Rural-Urban Policy.

The report found that, until the 1990-91 downturn, job losses were more cyclical in nature, while many lost jobs never returned after more recent recessions. For example, after the 2001 recession, it took nearly five years for national employment to recover to pre-recession levels. Total employment, meanwhile, never recovered to its pre-2001 levels in Ohio.

Among the implications, the report said, are challenges for Ohio’s families and communities, as well as budget shortfalls for all levels of Ohio government, which could undermine education and infrastructure projects.

The report does offer some reasons for hope. It noted the current recession so far in Ohio has not been as severe as the 1981-82 recession. It also said Ohio may break out of the pattern in which its downturns are more severe than those nationally since it is no longer as reliant on the long-suffering manufacturing sector, and because its housing bubble was not as large as other states’.

The report also said that, if Ohio is to make fundamental changes to improve its economic potential, it must “let go of its traditional litany of excuses for its relative poor economic performance,” namely the decline in automobile manufacturing. The report found that declines in the auto sector weren’t enough to explain the decline in Ohio’s economy over the past 40 years.

The report, authored by Mark D. Partridge, Xuetao Huang and Tripti Uprety, examined recessions in 1973-75, 1980, 1981-82, 1990-91, 2001 and the one that began in December 2007. It relies on employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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